Will it be faster than a Midget?

I just don't understand why this series seems intent on shooting itself in the foot repeatedly when reasonable alternatives are available.


What series is reasonable that will get you laps on 1.5 ovals and road courses?

The IRL pro series isn't cheap to run and breaks on light impacts.
NASCAR has no cheap series.
IRL is too expensive for it's own self, except for a few large teams.
Star Mazda??? drink the wine and eat the cheese series.

All of the purse, schedule and officals has to wait until the teams get cars refitted.

Look inside the left sidepod and you can see the side bumper.

Safety issues compared to present Silver Crown cars are considerable.
The complete front end bolts to the 4 major frame tube with a driver steering rack type crushable structure, allows teams to unbolt the front end and bolt on a replacement.
Inside the side pods is a large curved bumper system to keep the side pods from crushing give a lot of strength in that area.Protecting the bits located inside. Large pads mounted to the frame is where this bolts to spread out impact energy. So it has good safety features with crushable structures.

Don't drink the wine or eat the crackers but watch in time what happens. A turd is a turd but they run turds every weekend in Nascar.
I hope it works for Bruce and the Teams, but not until 2011 as a series.
I will have newer pictures sometime this week after it comes back from the paint shop.

D.O.

I edited the show so the Ashmore interview starts off the top. It's at www.Racinwithdo.com

Enjoy

D.O.

Since you included nascar in your list, I assume stock cars are fair game here. ARCA will get you on 1.5s, along with 2s and 2.5s and 2.66 along with road courses. Now you can spend a million on an ARCA season, but it's twice as long as what is proposed here, so the cost per race would be about the same. And that's for a top line team. You know the back half of the ARCA fields haven't seen a million dollars in their career. And for real reasonable there is the Frank Kimmel Series that doesn't have any road courses that I know of, but it'll get you onto 1.5s for under $10K.

But from my point of view, we're talking open wheel, so they don't count. And I would tend to agree with your assessment of all of those open wheel series as unsuitable and therefore unreasonable. That doesn't make this series reasonable though. If and when this series is able to put 30+ cars those 1.5s, then it will have been proven in my opinion to be reasonable. The fact that no series that is running now or seriously proposed that fits that description doesn't mean that someone cannot or will not come up with something.

I've found out that I time out before I finish my post, so I'm going to submit this and add to it later.

---------- Post added at 08:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:53 PM ----------

Timed out again.

Of those series you listed, the IPS or Indy Lights now is probably the most similar to this series in a lot of ways. Remember, it was proposed to be a combonation ladder/destination/retirement series like the nascar grand national series. And it was highly touted as an affordable way for short trackers to get that all important rear engined road racing experience. But it wasn't that affordable. Hardly any short trackers ran in it at all. And since the IRL itself was and still is in such a mess, there were almost zero seats available for even the champions of the IPS, especially if you weren't family. The cars were comparably slow and expensive compared to almost anything else. Well here we are now and we don't have a rear engined carbon fiber car for $115K, but instead a front engined tube framed car that cost $85K. When you consider that the transaxle is a very significant part of the cost of the IPS, that brings the cost of this car much closer to what is already known to be too expensive.

Again, why road courses? We already know that the lack of road course experience was actually just an excuse. Neither the lack of road course experience or the lack of rear engine experience were the real barriers to short trackers racing at Indy. Money or the lack of it was and still is the barrier. If your check is big enough and will clear, you have all the experience needed to get an Indycar ride. If Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt were starting out, they would never make it to Indycars today. They only had talent, not money. So unless this series is really just going to be like the IPS, another place to park young road racers until they can get funding for an Indycar ride, why even have road courses? It doesn't take much reading on other boards to realize that the fans of the IRL or CART 1,2 or 3 hate the sound of normally aspirated large bore American V8s. They hate front engine cars and they hate tube framed cars. One thing they do seem to approve of is small fields of cars. Maybe that's what they are shooting for here?

OK, I'm looking at that picture and I see a few extra bars that would not be on a sprint car or would not be the same if the sprint car had nerf bars. But I don't see anything that would justify $52K. Not even $5200. If a bare sprint car frame goes for $2500, then a few extra bars wouldn't more than $520. I'm looking for some value here and I'm not seeing it.

I listened to the program again and caught a couple of things I wasn't clear on the first time.

ECR racing has 175 engines? So? Even if they supplied the entire field which they are not going to be doing, that would be 8 engines per car. That's quite a few engines for a 6-8 race season of 100 mile races. This was brought up as if there was some sort of worry that there wouldn't be enough engines?

Purses? "....wouldn't even be close to a regular SC purse of $10K to win." That's not an exact quote, but that's what I took from what was said. So we're talking about a car that cost 3 times what a sprint car costs running for sprint car sized purses? What's the point of running on superspeedways if you don't expect larger crowds to generate larger purses? The Frank Kimmel street stocks get a crowd of 10K to watch streets stocks run at 130mph.

Mr. Ashmore does point out that midgets are upside down in their purse structure. That's great that he recognizes that, but why does he think that's a good plan to emulate?

And finally, you suggested that much of this stuff could not be done until all the cars had their new bodies. Does that mean there is some question about if and when that will happen?

First off I want to thank D.O for having Bruce on his show and giving him the opportunity to talk about the GC series. As for the purse structure we as owners are willing to do what it takes to move this program forward we all know it will take time for this series to get to a point where we can get the purse structure to a point where we can make money. But it is called dedication and believing in where we are headed it wont be easy but as owners we believe in our destination.

What on earth makes you think this series will do something that is rarer (making money) than a post that doesn't flame Don Moore?

The Gold Crown series = the XFL and USFL of openwheel racing.

Stan the series is being set up for the new bodied car. So until they get the older cars ready, the rest, tracks, officals, purse, will be worked on. I'm not speaking for Bruce but I know that until you have cars to race you don't have a series. Ashmore is doing this pretty much on his own, doing everything as he own the series. I will be interresting to see how it all unfolds.

D.O.

I should have been more clear when I said make money no race car makes money so I should have said get paid a purse for the races. I am looking at the future the XFL and USFL were competing against the NFL witch was doing very well and you could not compete against them. The GC series is not competing against NASCAR or INDYCAR. You can poke holes in anything if you try hard enough but at least there are a few of us trying to do something rather than nothing and sit behind our keyboards and bash something that is trying to be a possitive in Racing.

Well I am not one of those people who got sold a an expensive toy that has no place to play anymore. I am not the one who made that awful business decision to buy one of those things.

This is never going to be a positive in racing. Remember, I have seen these cars in action (Chicagoland) and they were just GAWD AWFUL.

I sure don't expect you to speak for anyone except yourself. And I don't expect Mr. Ashmore to respond personally to my questions. I would hope that he continues to monitor sites like this for feedback though. I realize that I am being a contrarian here, but I'd really like to see open wheel cars on a superspeedway. As many know, my favorite form of racing is sprint cars winged or non winged on dirt. But the best races I ever saw, bar none were open wheeled cars at TMS up until about 2005.

That brings up another thing that I strongly disagree with Mr. Ashmore about. I DO think it's the driver's job to not hit the other cars that he is racing with. Of course I realize it happens, but racing is dangerous and the best drivers are able to drive wheel to wheel at high speeds without hitting each other. I've seen hundreds of laps of them doing that. It's no different that it being the driver's job to not hit the wall. I'm not totally opposed to side pods, but I am opposed to them being used as crutches to make up for lack of control by the driver.

---------- Post added at 10:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 PM ----------

I'm all for being positive. I have no problem with a series starting small and building. And I'm glad a few of you are trying to do something rather than nothing. But I can't and won't ignore glaring problems. There are a few of you, but there needs to be more. If your goal is a professional type series where fans pay a large part of the purse and where ratings cause companies to step up and pay large parts of the expenses, then you need a lot more cars. On the other hand, if your goal is an expensive club racing deal, then perhaps the more expensive the car the better. That's been put forth as an argument against checking the cost in the IRL. High prices help keep out the riff raff, such as sprint car fans.